


The New Year of the Trees

by ariadnes_string



Series: Far From the Rhodope Mountains [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Bloodplay, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Golems, Jewish Character, M/M, Magic, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:12:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3462260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I saw you wake up and the blood appear.  I knew what you were.”<br/>Joseph Kavinsky, <i>The Dream Thieves</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Year of the Trees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkrosaleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/gifts).



> This probably won't make sense without reading the first story in the series, [The Dream Forest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3461390).
> 
> Many thanks to isis for the beta!

The boy lay on the grass beneath Prokopenko’s window: dark jeans, shaved skull, dark lines of a tattoo running up his neck. He was asleep. He was beautiful.

Kavinsky knew the boy’s name, of course: Ronan Lynch. _Fucking goyim_ , Kavinsky’s mother always said, half-admiring, half-contemptuous, whenever she saw a pack of Aglionby boys, with their Docksiders and lacrosse muscles. Kavinsky mostly agreed with her, but Lynch had always seemed different, even before his father had been murdered. Reckless. Cruel in a way that Kavinsky appreciated. And the way he looked at his inseparable companion, Richard Gansey III, the most _goyishe goy_ of all? Kavinsky knew that look.

At the moment, though, the cruel, tragic Ronan Lynch had been reduced to a beautiful boy asleep on the grass. Drunk, probably. Alcohol seemed to be Lynch’s drug of choice.

Kavinsky smiled, thinking of the acts he might perpetrate upon an unconscious Ronan Lynch.

+

In the four years since he’d first dreamed of the forest, Kavinsky had learned many things.

He’d learned what language the letters were speaking—courtesy of Google, since the Kavinskys never set foot in a synagogue. From the same source, he’d learned that each letter was also a number—a fact that became useful when he started exporting large quantities of drugs and fake IDs out of the forest for the kids at his New Jersey junior high.

He’d learned how his father made a living. The kids at school had always whispered that his father was a mobster, and since Kavinsky’s parents neither contradicted that, nor offered evidence of any other occupation, he’d believed it, even though mobsters on TV always had gangs of henchmen, and Kavinsky’s father was a solitary soul. Their house looked like a mobster’s, anyway: far too big for three people, with high-ceilinged rooms inhabited by massive items—a flat-screen TV that took up an entire wall, a nine-foot long white leather couch.

One morning, though, Kavinsky came downstairs to find his father sitting in the middle of the living room, staring at a bag of golf clubs, their expensive label prominent along one side.

“I don’t even have anyone to play with,” his father said, raising bloodshot eyes, his words slurred. “I just like the way they look.”

And in a flash of horrified complicity, Kavinsky knew.

Later, he’d learned something else about his father. He’d learned what would make his father try to kill him.

“Goddamn _faigeles_ ,” his father had screamed, when he caught Danny Siegelman going down on Kavinsky for a dime bag in the family’s three-car garage. He’d grabbed the nearest thing to hand—one of those never-used golf clubs, as it happened—and lunged for them. Danny scrambled out the garage door, never to be seen again, but Kavinsky, caught literally with his pants down, had been beaten black and blue.

The next day, his mother, her mouth a grim line of disapproval, had put him in the Mercedes and driven south. She didn’t approve of his proclivities any more than his father did, but she approved of conflict even less. 

“Did we ever live in a forest,” Kavinsky asked her, in one of their increasingly rare exchanges.

“My family comes from the Rhodope Mountains,” she told him. “The forests there are beautiful. It’s where Orpheus was born, you know.”

He hadn’t known, and he’d found he wanted to. But the memories brought on a drug-induced reverie, and he’d gotten no more from her that day.

At Aglionby, they accepted him, if only for the parties he threw and the quantities of drugs he could procure, but he’d had to learn how make his own friends.

On Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, when he suspected the forest’s power might be at its peak, Kavinsky made his way to the stream that ran through one of its wilder corners. From its banks, he scooped enough clay to model a teenage boy. Around him, the trees seemed to glower. They were on poor terms with him; he’d stolen so much over the years. The letters, too, skittered away when he searched for the ones he needed. But he’d learned how to lure them out—they were suckers for snickers bars—and so he trapped right ones easily enough. Quickly, he stuffed them into the mouth hole he’d fashioned in his clay boy, though they shrieked and struggled like tiny, dying bats. 

And with a shudder and groan, Prokopenko came to life.

+

But a boy made out of clay could never stir him the way a living, breathing Ronan Lynch could.

And so Kavinsky made his way from Prokopenko’s room to where Lynch lay sleeping on the grass.

How best to fuck with him? First strip him naked; that was easy. And he had a Sharpie, so he could write something good across Lynch’s forehead or chest: Lynch sucks Dick, perhaps, or Gansey’s Cunt. But would it be enough?

He crouched beside Lynch. No smell of alcohol, which was strange. He appeared to be truly asleep. This close, he could see how thick Lynch’s eyelashes were, and how lovely his parted lips. Kavinsky touched the place where Lynch’s strange tattoo disappeared under his collar; then the inside of his arm, where the veins stood out blue against pale skin. He wished he could take Lynch somewhere private; he wanted to do so much more.

And then, as if his secret thoughts had made it happen, a trickle of blood appeared on Lynch’s wrist. Kavinsky snatched his hand back, and watched, fascinated, as deep wounds appeared, first on one wrist, then the other. They widened, bleeding freely; Lynch groaned, and Kavinsky shivered with desire. _How?_ he wondered, and then, as with his father, he knew. These were the marks of a dream fight, killing Lynch in the waking world. Unable to resist, he dipped a finger in Lynch’s blood, laid it on his own tongue. The copper taste was sweet, familiar. 

He wasn’t alone at Aglionby, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In some versions of the [golem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem) myth, a piece of paper bearing a mystical name is inserted into the creature's mouth.
> 
> Image is "Tree of Seven Fruits of Israel" by Michoel Muchnik (found [here](http://muchnikarts.imagekind.com/store/imagedetail.aspx/46d0a05a-0357-4daa-8248-6ab2a2ec7c65/Tree_with_Seven_Fruits_of_Israel)


End file.
